underarm kush week 3 veg (newbie here)

[chiefwhitecloud]

Hey growers whats up. First off wanna say im a newbie to growing, and first impressions are its more complex than i anticipated. So my grow setup is, 3x3x4ft wood box built in my closet, 600 watt mh veg, and 600watt hps flower. soil is fox farm ocean forest. Thus far no nutes and been using dasani bottled water from start, i know a bit expensive, but i didn't trust my tap water. 18/6 light schedule, average temp 78, with controlled humidity around 65%. I do not check ph as i assume the bottled water should be at a good level.
So the first 2 weeks it grew very fast,(grew to a foot tall) and looked very healthy, leaves were standing straight out with no curls or droops. Then i did my second transplant a day after watering and i gave it more water right after transplant. this is where it went down hill. it got very droopy the next day, so i lowered the humidity to dry it out some. As it was looking like it would recover, i did something stupid, and hacked of 2 sets of the main stem fan leaves. i did not enough research before hand. should have known the plant has those leaves for a reason and it knows what its doing. i just wanted more light to the center nodes as the large indica leaves kept them well shaded. the main stem growth has dramatically slowed down, as its not getting the energy it was getting from those large leaves. Ive seen it go from droopy to perky back to droopy in between watering. then today came home to clawing leaves on the main stem.
Any opinions or advice would be appreciated.

chiefwhitecloud Reviewed by chiefwhitecloud on 02-23-2012. underarm kush week 3 veg (newbie here) Hey growers whats up. First off wanna say im a newbie to growing, and first impressions are its more complex than i anticipated. So my grow setup is, 3x3x4ft wood box built in my closet, 600 watt mh veg, and 600watt hps flower. soil is fox farm ocean forest. Thus far no nutes and been using dasani bottled water from start, i know a bit expensive, but i didn't trust my tap water. 18/6 light schedule, average temp 78, with controlled humidity around 65%. I do not check ph as i assume the bottled Rating: 5

[Minnesnowta]

Just at a glance it kinda looks like overwatering to me. But you say your average temp is 78.. are you including night time temps and taking an average off of a digital thermo. or something? I don't know what kind of venting you have but your cabinet seems kinda small for a 600W MH, as far as heat control goes. Also you might be giving your plants a little bit too much light intensity, but thats a subject that I don't know a ton about because I use fluorescents instead of MH, but with a 600W MH I'd guess you need to keep that at least 12" above your plant, and if your cab is 3ft tall, that doesn't leave much room between your plant, the container, the light, and the hangers. That is all speculation though, maybe you're doing just fine with that lighting. I would also find a way to hang your thermometer around the top of your plant to take the temp at that level. Where you have it right now is much lower causing the temp it reads to be lower, and could also be shaded by the edge of the pot causing it to read even lower than that. So really the temp you need to know is how hot it is under the light, right at the top of your plant. One more small recommendation is that when you transplant your plants, fill the pots up a little further with soil to allow good ventilation and air flow around the soil surface. This will allow the soil to dry out better to reduce the risk of overwatering or mold/fungus/rot issues. Your plant appears to have somewhat dry soil on top in the picture so I don't think overwatering is the issue but I don't know. Just don't add soil now and bury the plant further up the stem, that will cause the main stem to rot and the plant will die.

Other than that I would recommend going to your local garden shop and getting some PH indicator dye for like $5-$10 at the most, your bottled water should be fine around 7.0 but you're going to want to keep an eye on the soil runoff PH even more than you need to check the bottled water you use.

Hopefully you can figure out the temperature thing and that helps you out. Let me know how it goes for you and post some more updates. If nothing I said helps you out then post as much additional info as you can about your plants and we'll see if we can't figure something else out. Other than the droopiness they look pretty healthy, and I'd lean towards too strong of lighting. With the trimming and transplanting it would be under stress and might not want such strong light for a few days. How long ago was the trim/transplant session anyways?

[Minnesnowta]

Also don't be discouraged by the complexity of growing indoors. Its really not that complex, in fact, its really only as complex as you want it to be. Cannabis plants are very resilient, hence the name "weed". It'll take a little time to get these simple things dialed in to grow healthy plants, and from there its pretty much all just doing it better, and better and better until you're satisfied with what you've got going on. And if that doesn't happen, don't worry, cuz I don't think I'm every going to be "satisfied", its fun to always try to find things to improve upon, and I'm still nowhere near a professional or master grower. You'll enjoy it, trust me.

[chiefwhitecloud]

yea i just hung the thermometer yesterday, day temp is 78 and night temp is 59 usually. i have a duct fan for exhaust and a pssive intake. I just recently raised my light to max height. I changed to hps a few days ago to get it used to the light before flower. Just came out of its first 12 hour dark time 2 hours ago and i already see very small preflowers, possibly small pistols but hard to tell. Now the edges of the large leaves seem to be curling down along with the tips curling down, but only on main stem growth. I trimmed on the 19th, a day after transplant. I am going for a ph tester in the morning also. Thanks so much for the advice i will post another pic tomorrow.

[Minnesnowta]

Sounds like a PH issue to me honestly. My guess would be low. Also you should actually put the MH back in and use that for the first week or maybe even two of 12/12. I haven't done this personally, and I plan to do it a little bit differently by adding a MH light in with my HPS. The goal is to reduce the stretching that is done early on in flowering and tighten up the node spacing. Another thread here in basic growing called "23 days of flower blah blah blah" something like that... we started a discussion about the use of MH during flowering. Check that out when you get a chance, its experimental theory to me, but someone else seems to be having success with it. Once you get the PH meter and more pictures and such it should be easier to fix your plant, shes looking healthy though for the most part. Keep on it.

[chiefwhitecloud]

Sounds like a PH issue to me honestly. My guess would be low. Also you should actually put the MH back in and use that for the first week or maybe even two of 12/12. I haven't done this personally, and I plan to do it a little bit differently by adding a MH light in with my HPS. The goal is to reduce the stretching that is done early on in flowering and tighten up the node spacing. Another thread here in basic growing called "23 days of flower blah blah blah" something like that... we started a discussion about the use of MH during flowering. Check that out when you get a chance, its experimental theory to me, but someone else seems to be having success with it. Once you get the PH meter and more pictures and such it should be easier to fix your plant, shes looking healthy though for the most part. Keep on it.

Well i discovered that mh actually out uv rays, as i have transition lens glasses and it darkens them in 2 seconds. As you probably know the tricomes, or however you spell it, of cannabis are a defense against uv rays and herbivores mostly. So more exsposer to uv might mean more tricomes= more thc.

[killfrenzi]

Just at a glance it kinda looks like overwatering to me. But you say your average temp is 78.. are you including night time temps and taking an average off of a digital thermo. or something? I don't know what kind of venting you have but your cabinet seems kinda small for a 600W MH, as far as heat control goes. Also you might be giving your plants a little bit too much light intensity, but thats a subject that I don't know a ton about because I use fluorescents instead of MH, but with a 600W MH I'd guess you need to keep that at least 12" above your plant, and if your cab is 3ft tall, that doesn't leave much room between your plant, the container, the light, and the hangers. That is all speculation though, maybe you're doing just fine with that lighting. I would also find a way to hang your thermometer around the top of your plant to take the temp at that level. Where you have it right now is much lower causing the temp it reads to be lower, and could also be shaded by the edge of the pot causing it to read even lower than that. So really the temp you need to know is how hot it is under the light, right at the top of your plant.

Other than that I would recommend going to your local garden shop and getting some PH indicator dye for like $5-$10 at the most, your bottled water should be fine around 7.0 but you're going to want to keep an eye on the soil runoff PH even more than you need to check the bottled water you use.

Yup, "Minnesnowta" right, Your room seems kinda short for that light not really small, just short. You may need to chop the top Your temp is fine, air exchange in an area that small is an issue, as your Co2 levels start to drop due to higher humidity and air temps. Keep fresh air coming in and out. Another thing, if you are using bottled water you are essentially using RO "Reverse Ozmosis" water. In this case you will want to monitor your Calcium and Magnesium levels as they will drop leaving your plant looking unhealthy. If this becomes an issue try adding a little "Epsom Salt" at 1 tsp/gal. Ph shouldnt be an issue if you are using FFOF. FoxFarm adds PH buffers in their soil to help with the PH issues people have. Same goes for Cal. and Mag. If your plants still look droopy after a few days of no water, try lowering the humidity level to about 45%. 45% is optimal thru its entire life cycle.

If you follow Minnewnowta's thread, I've been posting with him. Keep us informed. We'll do our best to help!

[chiefwhitecloud]

Yup, "Minnesnowta" right, Your room seems kinda short for that light not really small, just short. You may need to chop the top Your temp is fine, air exchange in an area that small is an issue, as your Co2 levels start to drop due to higher humidity and air temps. Keep fresh air coming in and out. Another thing, if you are using bottled water you are essentially using RO "Reverse Ozmosis" water. In this case you will want to monitor your Calcium and Magnesium levels as they will drop leaving your plant looking unhealthy. If this becomes an issue try adding a little "Epsom Salt" at 1 tsp/gal. Ph shouldnt be an issue if you are using FFOF. FoxFarm adds PH buffers in their soil to help with the PH issues people have. Same goes for Cal. and Mag. If your plants still look droopy after a few days of no water, try lowering the humidity level to about 45%. 45% is optimal thru its entire life cycle.

If you follow Minnewnowta's thread, I've been posting with him. Keep us informed. We'll do our best to help!

Thanks guys you are really nice and helpful. here are more pics. one shows my room, one has the preflowers and the other is me plant as of today. Attachment 282906Attachment 282907Attachment 282908

[chiefwhitecloud]

ok here a a link to my youtube channel, check it out mcdoublemcchicken's Channel - YouTube

[Minnesnowta]

I should try that ocean forest stuff.. idk why but I've always decided to try out other things I think because by the sounds of it I know ocean forest is great already. I'm using a different ff soil right now.